- FELT, Dorr Eugene, inventor and manufacturer, b. in Beloit,
Wis., 18 March, 1863. He was the
- eldest of the twelve children of Eugene Kincaid and Elizabeth
(MORRIS) FELT, and is a descendant in the seventh generation
from George FELT (1601-93), a native of England, who came to
Massachusetts Bay Colony ahout 1628, residing at Casco Bay, Me.,
for many years, and died at Maiden, Mass. From George FELT and
his wife, Prudence WILKINSON, of Charlestown, Mass., the line
of descent runs through their son, Moses, and his wife, Lydia;
through their son, Aaron, and his wife, Mary WYATT; through their
son, Joseph, and his wife, Elizabeth SPOFFORD, and through their
son, Asa George, and his wife, Elizabeth SPOFFORD; and through
their son, Asa George, and his wife, Harriet FOSTER, parents
of Eugene K. FELT, father of the inventor. According to records,
the first three generations of the family were represented principally
in agricultural occupations. Joseph FELT (1757-1842) served for
seven years in the Revolutionary army, being taken prisoner at
Fort Washington in November, 1776, and receiving a wound, on
account of which he was pensioned in 1818. Asa G. FELT (1791-1871)
removed from Webster, Mass., to Newark, Wis., in 1846, and was
active in public life during the period of upbuilding of the
new country. Eugene K. FELT (b. 1838) has been engaged principally
in farming and lumbering through most of his life. He served
in Wisconsin as superintendent of public instruction of Newark,
town and county supervisor, as member of the State legislature
in 1872-83, during the latter year also as chairman of its committee
on railroads, and, having removed to Kansas in 1883, was a delegate
to the State Republican Convention in 1888. Dorr E. FELT is a
worthy representative of a long-lived and active ancestry. He
was educated in the schools of his native county until his sixteenth
year, when he left home to make a place in the world for himself.
Following the natural bent of his mind toward machinery and construction,
he was employed in various machine shops, learned the machinist's
trade in all its branches, and became a proficient mechanical
draftsman. As a young man he devoted most of his time to devising
and constructing models of new devices, one of which was a mechanical
calculator. Very many men of attainment had already attacked
the problem of an efficient mechanical calculator of universal
utility, but FELT's aim was the production of a device that should
facilitate the ordinary calculations of commerce, engineering,
and science. Nor did the design of such a machine involve merely
the contrivance of a train of parts to accomplish a series of
predetermined movements, which should render possible the integration
of common mathematical calculations, but also the mental grasp
of the essentials of all arithmetical calculations. During the
winter of 1884-85, when not quite twenty-three years of age,
Mr. FELT constructed his first working model of a comptometer,
by taking an old macaroni box as the containing case for his
mechanism, and by forming most of the parts of wood. Even this
crude and heavy device sufficed to demonstrate his principles
and encourage him to construct a service machine with metal parts.
This latter he completed in the following year (1886), forming
all the component elements by hand, and making sundry minor improvements
of design. According to good evidence, it was the first accurate
multiple-column-key-operated adding and calculating machine ever
constructed. Several of these machines were built within the
next year, all of them being used practically, some for fifteen
years, or more, with perfect satisfaction, in banking, mercantile,
and other business establishments. The eager acceptance of his
machines by progressively-minded business men encouraged Mr.
FELT to enlarge his manufacturing facilities, which he did in
1887 by forming a partnership with Robert Tarrant, of Chicago,
under the firm style of FELT and TARRANT. The business thus inaugurated
was incorporated in the following year as the FELT and TARRANT
Manufacturing Company, which still continues, with Mr. FELT as
president. The sphere of operations was further enlarged in 1888-89,
when the first specimens of his perfected comptograph, undoubtedly
the earliest practical and accurate printing-adding machine,
were produced. This machine, performing the processes of integrating
a mathematical process by essentially the same process used in
the comptometer, which shows merely the results at the end of
a given computation, also prints such results on long strips
of paper, a result which saves the labor otherwise necessary
of transcribing the figures. Such a machine is especially useful
in making records of lengthy columns of figures, as, for example,
listing and adding the amounts on bank checks, in totaling a
depositor's account at the end of a month, etc. It was the pioneer
of mechanical recording adders, and, furthermore, operated on
the essential mechanical principles common to all of them, by
printing the results of addition of several columns of figures,
and automatically filling in the ciphers. These two machines,
the comptometer and the comptograph, were entirely distinct from
the beginning, although involving the use of different parts
and later made in separate establishments. Accordingly, when
in 1902-03, Mr. FELT invented an entirely new mechanism for the
comptometer, the business of manufacturing and selling the comptograph
was sold to the Comptograph Company, then incorporated for the
purpose of developing its possibilities. The leading operative
advantages involved in the new mechanism of the comptometer were
provisions for reducing the pressure necessary to operate the
keys and for making all strokes entirely uniform as to length
and time required for operation, results then accomplished for
the first time in any key-operated calculating device. Further
improvements were made in 1909-10, when Mr. FELT perfected the
first practical device ever produced to compel a full stroke
at each depression of a key. Previous to this achievement, he
had attempted to obtain this effect by some method of locking
such keys as were being operated, but this device proving useless,
he hit upon the plan of locking all the other keys, in case of
a partial stroke of any given key. Being himself a competent
constructor, as well as an experienced designer, Mr. FELT is
able to superintend the experimental work of every new model
of his device from the very start. He had been accustomed to
construct all models with his own hands, and continues experimenting
and rebuilding, until the desired lightness of key touch, complete
accuracy, and sufficient durability of all parts of the intricate
mechanism are perfectly attained. Nor have his labors ended with
the production of an efficient machine. A far greater task has
been that involved in the devising of methods for performing
all kinds of arithmetical operations by its help. Starting with
the simple and fundamental processes, he has been obliged to
devise methods for all the various classes of computations required
in commercial and engineering work. Some of these appear for
midable at first sight, but closer study reveals the fact that
several valuable new properties of numbers and combinations of
quantities have been developed by the use of this machine. In
addition to all the other activities that have characterized
the work of Mr. FELT's life, we find him also in active control
of the manufacturing and selling departments of his great business.
He personally turned salesman at the beginning of his career,
and actually sold by his own efforts the first few hundred machines
produced in his works. At the present time his companies are
represented by selling staffs in all parts of the civilized world,
and the machines have earned a well-merited recognition. As claimed
by the inventor, the comptometer furnishes the swiftest and most
accurate method known for all classes of computation. It is superior
to the listing adder in the fact that it is a one-motion machine,
and, in this respect, possesses the distinct advantage of enabling
the operator to make much greater speed, while keeping his attention
riveted on the figures with which he is working. As an evidence
of this claim the inventor states that, even in the stress of
a competitive trial between different makes of adding and calculating
machines, the operators on the comptometer averaged much higher
in accuracy than was possible with any other type of machine.
As a consequence of the high efficiency attainable by this machine,
it has been repeatedly barred from competition in great exhibitions
of contrivances for accomplishment of similar results. This decision
was made by the governors of such exhibitions, notably at the
first annual office appliance and business system show at Chicago
in March, 1905, and at the convention of the Incorporated Accountants
of Michigan at Detroit, in August, 1907. Such a decision as this,
made by a committee of men familiar with the requirements and
performances of selected office appliances, is to be explained
by the fact that, whereas most manufacturers of adding machines
claim a speed of 120 numeral wheel movements per minute, the
comptometer, in the hands of an expert operator, can attain as
high a speed as 400 or 500 numeral wheel movements per minute
with perfect accuracy of result. The comptometer has repeatedly
won the highest awards at trade and international expositions,
and several medals have been issued to the inventor in recognition
of his achievements in mechanical science. Notable among these
may be mentioned the John Scott medal of the Franklin Institute,
awarded by the city of Philadelphia in 1889; the gold medal of
the Columbian Exposition in 1893; a gold medal by the Lewis and
Clark Centennial in 1905; and the grand prize of the International
Exposition at Turin in 1911. Although Mr. FELT has been granted
forty-six patents in the United States and twenty-five in foreign
countries, they refer principally to adding and calculating machines
and parts. He has always been an interested student of live topics
of the day. His opinions are sought and carefully considered
by his fellow business men, and he has frequently made suggestions
of value to the President and national lawmakers. Notable occasions
of public protests on his part were his letters to President
Wilson on the provisions of the Clayton Bill touching patents
and interlocking directorates, provisions which, as he recognized,
might embarrass some of the greater corporations or "trusts,"
but would certainly work considerable hardship for other classes
of business men, who have no intention of conducting " repressive
monopolies," or of stifling just competition. He also expressed
himself strongly at a meeting of the Illinois Manufacturers'
Association on 7 Aug., 1914, against the proposal to allow foreign
merchant ships to sail under the American flag. Mr. FELT has
been a wide traveler in various parts of the world. He is a member
of the Chicago Athletic Association, and of the Union League
and City clubs of Chicago, of the Wisconsin Society of Chicago,
the Sons of the American Revolution, and other organizations,
social, business, and learned. He was married 15 Jan., 1891,
to Agnes, daughter of George W. McNULTY, of Bellevue, Ta. They
have four daughters: Virginia, Elizabeth, Constance, and Dorothea.
-
- [Taken from "The Cyclopaedia of American Biography,
Vol. VIII" edited by James Homans; (c)1918 The Press Association
Compilers, Inc., New York; pp. 153, 155-156]
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